Outlander: Final Emmy odds for series, Sam Heughan, Caitriona Balfe

We’re getting set for the 2018 Primetime Emmy Awards to be announced in terms of nominations on the morning of July 12, and with that, we’re also checking back in one final time to see what the current odds are for Outlander to score its first major nomination in the Drama Series or any of the major acting categories. Has the needle moved all that much? If you’ve been reading for a while, you know our preference is to see nominations across the board.

We do think that when you look at Drama Series, Actress in a Drama Series (Caitriona Balfe), and Actor in a Drama Series (Sam Heughan), Balfe remains the most likely contender to score a nomination. You just have a precedent that’s set from the Golden Globes there and most projections are that Caitriona is one of those performers who is somewhat on the nomination bubble. Heughan and the series itself are considered to be greater underdogs, but of the two, we’re a little more confident in a Sam nomination for reasons we’re about to spell out.

One thing that probably aids Sam is this: Save for maybe Sterling K. Brown from This Is Us, there aren’t too many performers we would consider to be 100% locks. You may have people like Freddie Highmore (The Good Doctor), Matthew Rhys (The Americans), and even Brown’s co-star Milo Ventimiglia in strong contention, but this field is so stacked that there could be a lot of split votes cast and a few surprises on Thursday. Take a look a just some other great actors in contention: Jason Bateman (Ozark), J.K. Simmons (Counterpart), Liev Schreiber (Ray Donovan), Kit Harington (Game of Thrones), Damian Lewis (Billions), and Rami Malek (Mr. Robot). There’s a pretty clear chance that Heughan manages to get enough votes as an underdog to find his way in as a nominee. We think that, in general, there are more nominees we consider to be locks in the Drama Actress and Drama Series field; Sterling is probably the consensus favorite for a Drama Actor win, but there’s some flux when it comes to nominations in the category. Sam, with enough support, could find his way into the mix.

For Balfe, we don’t think vote-splitting plays too much of a role: We think that Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid’s Tale), Claire Foy (The Crown), Evan Rachel Wood (Westword), and Mandy Moore (This Is Us) are near locks, which leads two spots open. Of those two spots, we think they will be filled by a combination of either Balfe, Keri Russell (The Americans), Sandra Oh (Killing Eve), or Viola Davis (How to Get Away with Murder). It’s possible if the votes are close enough there could be three additional nominees, which will push the field to seven instead of the typical six.

We’re certainly intrigued to see how the Emmy nomination field shapes up when the Primetime Emmy Awards are announced, and we’ll be back that morning with more news regarding the nominations, snubs, and surprises.

Related – Check out more news on the future of Outlander

For more discussion on the subject, check out the video below (subscribe for more); meanwhile, you can like CarterMatt on Facebook for some other information regarding the Starz series the moment we have it. (Photo: Starz.)